UP Board’s 2024-25 Academic Calendar: Co-curricular activities, career counselling scheduled for Saturdays

All co-curricular activities and career counselling sessions will now take place on Saturdays in over 27,000 schools affiliated with the UP Board across the state. The academic calendar for the 2024-25 session, released by UP Board Secretary Dibyakant Shukla on Friday night, highlighted this significant change of designating Saturdays as the day for all types of co-curricular activities and career counselling, as informed by UP Board officials.
Career counselling classes will be held in two periods after lunch break on the second and fourth Saturdays of every month in every schools. The responsibility to hold the counselling has been given to the Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA)—a flagship scheme of government of India, to enhance access to secondary education and improve its quality, they added.
These sessions will cover topics such as understanding what a career entails, essential qualities for building a successful career, making informed choices regarding careers, leveraging hobbies to advance in one’s career, gathering information about specific career paths, steps for personal development, engaging in sessions with experts, and receiving training on aspects like resume writing, career planning, conducting psychometry tests, and exploring career options through case studies.
In the four periods before the lunch break, a variety of activities will take place, including awareness rallies, competitions, cleanliness campaigns, collective oaths, yoga programs at the ghat, and discussions on child and women’s rights. Additionally, there will be activities such as creating compost pits in the school, establishing school gardens, learning and singing folk songs, participating in ‘Prabhat Pheri’, organising sports events, holding parent-teacher meetings, and introducing students to alphabets, songs, proverbs, and unique words in the languages of the paired states (Arunachal Pradesh and Meghalaya).